Daily mean sea level pressure reconstructions for the European - North Atlantic region for the period 1850-2003

The development of a daily historical North-Atlantic – European mean sea level pressure (MSLP) dataset from 1850-2003 is described. This product, known as EMSLP, was produced using 86 continental and island stations distributed over the region 70 West – 50 East, 25 – 70 North, blended with marine data from the International Comprehensive Ocean Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS). The MSLP fields from 1850-1880 are based purely on the land station data and ship observations. From 1881, the blended land and marine fields are combined with already available daily Northern Hemisphere fields. Complete coverage is obtained by employing Reduced Space Optimal Interpolation (RSOI). Comparisons with historical products such as that produced by Jones et al (1999) indicate that EMSLP is able to reproduce climatological features and extreme events well. A lack of sufficient observations over Greenland, however, has resulted in poorer reconstructions here. Error estimates, produced as part of the reconstruction technique, flag this as a region of low confidence. The EMSLP daily fields and associated error estimates provide a unique opportunity to examine the circulation patterns associated with extreme events across the European-North Atlantic region.